behind one of the pillars with the registers of the temple on his knees, staring at the coloured glyphs on the maguey paper as if he could coax them into speaking. He rose, hastily, when my cane scraped on the floor. 'Acatl- tzin.'
'Did you stay up all night?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'I couldn't sleep.'
'You and me both,' I said, sombrely. 'Something is going on in the palace, on top of everything else.' I explained, briefly, what I'd felt in the courtyard of the prisoners' quarters.
When I was done, Ichtaca's face was grave. 'Those are serious matters.'
'I know,' I said. The Duality curse me, I knew all too well. 'I guess you must have news.'
Ichtaca grimaced. 'In many areas, yes. If we start by the smallest – I sent a couple of offering priests to the Duality House, to see if we could heal the sick.'
'And?'
'I don't know. They haven't come back. I suppose it's a good thing.'
'I suppose so.'
'And the rest?'
He wouldn't look at me. 'I haven't gone very far, but I think you're right about the boundaries. They're weakened.'
'And am I right about the causes?' I asked, even though I already suspected the answer.
Ichtaca didn't answer for a while.
'Ichtaca, it's past time for respect. If it's my fault, I'd rather hear it now, than have you not say anything out of respect. That helps no one.'
He sighed. 'It is as you said. There is a dead man among the living. This creates a hole.'
'But not what we had last year.'
'There is a Revered Speaker,' Ichtaca said. 'He keeps us safe from star-demons. But his very existence…'
It reminded me of an old story Mother had used to tell me, about a man clinging to a branch above an abyss – save that the branch was a tree-snake. He could haul himself up, but the moment he released the snake, the creature would wrap itself around him and choke him to death. Or he could, of course, let go, and fall into the chasm; in the end, he had to take the risk to be choked by the snake, for he wouldn't survive the fall. 'By his very existence, he's weakening the boundaries,' I said.
'Yes.' Ichtaca would not look at me, or at my sandals. 'There is a door open, and ghosts are coming through, and the plague.'
I shook my head. 'The plague is a spell, not a summoning. It's not coming from the weakened boundaries.' But it might be spreading faster because of them: none of the usual barriers against spells were in place anymore. And the ghosts… the ghosts were an additional confusion we didn't need. 'Doors can be closed,' I said.
'It would kill him.'
And, once more, leave us defenceless against star-demons, until weeks of bickering had passed and the council finally designated a new Revered Speaker. 'Then left ajar,' I said. 'With a smaller opening. It's wide open right now, isn't it?'
Ichtaca sighed.
'It could be done,' I said. If the plague didn't kill us first. 'There are spells, in the codices…'
'There might be. But they're going to require time.'
'Then let's take it. I don't much like the alternatives,' I said.
Ichtaca was silent, for a while. 'I'll set the offering priests to researching the matter. Those who are not busy elsewhere.'
There was no sarcasm in his voice, though from where we sat, we could see the crowd in the courtyard, and hear the faint voices raised in argument.
Ichtaca looked up at the night sky – at the stars, which were the eyes of monsters. 'Something is going to happen, Acatl-tzin. I can feel it in my bones. Something in the palace.'
His tone was earnest, and I felt some of his unease. 'We can't actually move on premonitions.' If they'd been genuine visions, which were rare enough, it would have been another matter…
My eye was caught by some movement near the entrance: it looked like priests from our order, struggling to go through the crowd. 'Ichtaca?'
He stared down. 'Those are the priests I sent to the palace,' he said. 'Something is wrong.'
SEVENTEEN
When we arrived at the palace, I immediately felt the sense of wrongness. It wasn't the hushed quiet – which by now had become the norm – or the atmosphere of reverent fear, which suggested the sickness had propagated yet further. Rather, it was the sense of purpose: people were still hurrying through the courtyards and the corridors, but they were mostly going in one direction, and their faces were grim.
'Acatl-tzin,' Ichtaca started, but I shook my head. Whatever was going on, we'd find out soon enough. The flow of people was going towards the quarters of the Revered Speaker, though that particular courtyard appeared much the same as ever. We followed a stream of minor noblemen in cotton clothes to a smaller courtyard decorated with rich frescoes and elaborate carvings. The smell of pine needles hung in the air, but even from where we stood – pressed in a crowd of noblemen, warriors and officials – Ichtaca and I felt it. The passage of Xolotl, Taker of the Dead, always left a particular trace in the air.
The crowd was thickest on the pyramid shrine at the centre of the courtyard. Without needing to glance at each other, Ichtaca and I sliced at our earlobes, and whispered an invocation to Lord Death, feeling the keening cold of the underworld spread over us like a mantle: the sharp touch of the Wind of Knives as He flayed the soul, the fear that seized the heart on hearing the howl of the beast of shadows; the dry, cold touch of Lord Death's skeletal hands. The crowd parted before us like a flock of quails, and we climbed the staircase easily, stopping, for a
